In the book Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam discusses the web. Putnam describes face-to-face interactions as tending to be "dense and bonded," but describes computer-mediated communication as "sparse and unbounded," and "easy in, easy out." He writes of the negative effects of computer-mediated communication: "depersonalization, psychological distance, weak social cues...." He speculates that adding voice or video might ameliorate this, but he not very optimistic.

By dweinberger on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - 08:22 am:

Hard to argue with his adjectives. I think he missed a whole bunch, though. In my experience - and I don't have the wealth of research Putnam has - while many of my Web relationships are shallow but entertaining, a surprising number of them are deep, intellectually dense (in the good sense), more focused, and highly personal. Adding richer media will change our relationships, but I don't subscribe to the value-laden "ameliorate."

By Tim Walker on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - 02:44 pm:

In response to Putnam I have to say that it's not necessarily so. My favorite web site, www.fourthturning.com, is based almost entirely on text. It is based on a sociological theory described in the books Generations and The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe, but threads have included psychology, economics, politics, history, movies, music, etc. Participants are permitted to start their own topics and create their own links. The links often link to another web site in order to make a point, but occasionally to the home page of the poster. This web site is sticky enough that a group of regulars and semi-regulars has developed. These people have posted often enough, and over such a wide range of topics, that their distinctive personalities have become familiar. Indeed, it has become a game to switch handles and then ask others to guess who they are (based almost entirely on their previously posted text).

By Tim Walker on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - 06:08 pm:

Actually, still photography and a little audio can go a long way. An image on a home page can give you a non-professional look at someone, and can give a homey feel, especially if combined with a little audio. Check out Melanie Safka's U.S. Home Page (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stadium/4952/), a fannish creation in the Folk Music Ring. To hear a song click the icon with the musical note. Here we hear a voice that can carry a tune yet seems friendly because it is not! perfectly melodious. By the way, if we deem a home page to be a document, we may have to stretch the definition to include audio.

By dweinberger on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - 06:30 pm:

Oh, I'm not so much of a text bigot as to think that video and audio never have a role to play. Thanks for the vivid examples, Tim.

By Tim Walker on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 01:14 pm:

Over the last half dozen years or so I have photocopied portions of articles or books that refer to the web. Unforetunately I usually failed to record the title or author. But anyway.... Quoting from one: "...One can join and be a 'member' of a large organization...but one becomes 'part' of a group. The groups, over time, develop rituals and customs out of their shared history. The size of such groups usually runs from one hundred to five hundred individuals. About the size of neighborhoods. Over five hundred and the group begins to split into two groups." Quoting from another: "'...When we were human beings in small tribes hunting and gathering, everybody you had to deal with was somebody you saw every day. We're a species that's based on communication with our entire tribe. As the population grew and people had to split up into smaller tribes and separate they got to the point where they would never see each other for their whole lives. The Internet is the first technology that lets us have many-to-many communication with anybody on the planet. In a sense, it's brought us back to something we lost thousands of years ago. So one reason I think the Internet's taken off so fast is that we always needed it. And we finally have it.'"

By Tim Walker on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 02:27 pm:

Quoting from Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point: "...the most interesting natural limit, however, is what might be called our social channel capacity. The case for a social capacity has been made, most persuasively, by the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar begins with a simple observation. Primates-monkeys, chimps, baboons, humans-have the biggest brains of all mammals. More important, a specific part of the brain of humans and other primates-the region known as the neocortex, which deals with complex thought and reasoning-is huge by mammal standards. ..so what...correlates with brain size? The answer, Dunbar argues, is group size. If you look at any species of primate-at every variety of monkey and ape-the larger their neocortex is, the larger the average size of the groups they live with. Dunbar's argument is that brains evolve, they get bigger, in order to handle the complexities of larger social groups...You have to understand the personal dynamics of the group, juggle different personalities, keep people happy, manage the demands on your time and attention, and so on...Dunbar has actually developed an equation, which works for most primates, in which he plugs in what he calls the neocortex ration of a particular species-the size of the neocortex relative to the size of the brain-and the equation spits out the expected maximum group size of the animal. If you plug in the neocortex ratio for Homo sapiens, you get a group estimate of 147.8- or roughtly 150..."...it's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar...." Pointing out that different groupings have come up against this limit of 150 people, Gladwell cites examples ranging from Hutterites to armies. Obviously, larger organizations are possible, but whereas groups below 150 can achieve their goals informally, larger groups most resort to hierarchy, rules, formal measures.

By dweinberger on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 02:32 pm:

For some types of activities, the rule of 150 holds well. But there's *tons* of evidence that that's not true for many of the activities on the Web.

By Tim Walker on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 09:01 am:

Some groupings may be the size of small towns-people in these needn't be as anonymous as they would be in a large city. But such groups may be developing means to cope with the somewhat larger size. In the book Cyberville Stacy Horn wrote that ECHO (East Coast Hang Out) has hosts, who function much like the host of a party. Katie Hafner also wrote of hosts in her book The Well (which refers to the Whole Earth 'lectronic Link). Both of these local electronic bulletin boards also featured substantial face-to-face activities. With a purely virtual situation, such as the book reviewers in Small Pieces Loosely Joined, stars were endorsed by peer review.

By Tim Walker on Sunday, June 23, 2002 - 12:24 pm:

Came across a comment that lurkers are fans, rather than members of, a virtual community. The point being that to belong to a community you must actually participate.

By dweinberger on Sunday, June 23, 2002 - 12:34 pm:

I like the "fans" idea, but I think it actually raises a different point: the nature of belonging and membership are quite different on the Web than in real world groups. And that's because online communities are obviously different from their RW counterparts.

By Tim Walker on Wednesday, June 26, 2002 - 02:02 pm:

I've been pondering how one could have a "faceful" crowd in a network large enough to be a mass medium. A hint comes from David Weinberger's description of communicating with different groups on September 11th-this fits a description in Putnam's Bowling Alone that the Web may become a series of cyberclubs with partially overlapping memberships, a community of communities linked by weak ties. Quoting from Gladwell's Tipping Point: "In the late 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is known as the small-world problem. The problem is this: how are human beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world, are few and distant? Or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web?" To summarize, Milgram's study indicated that any two people are separated by only five or six steps (contacts-friends of friends, or aquaintances of aquaintances). Gladwell himself gave examples that hint that something similar has occured back in history, before modern communications. My question is this-will the Web greatly enhance this phenomenon? The Web permits contact with multiple, often virtual groups very quickly at low cost-something like a chain reaction in an atomic bomb. This has the potential reach of radio and television but operates very differently, using a web of groups small enough to permit individuality.

By Tim Walker on Thursday, July 04, 2002 - 04:52 pm:

Quoting from Katie Hafner's book The Well: "...there was something about online conferencing...that gave power to someone who may not have power in personal appearance. The Well was a medium in which personalities quickly became evident-wisdom, humor, insight, and eloquence, or the dearth of such qualities, surfaced swiftly and purely, not filtered through the many physical attributes that color our perceptions of people when we meet them face-to face. Perhaps those who shone online fell flat or went unnnoticed in real life. Being online was an opportunity for the shy, self-conscious, or socially awkward to wield power, to command respect and gain popularity. The soft-spoken could dispense their quiet wisdom without interruption. By the same token, many people who tended to dominate in real-life conversation could find themselves at a loss when unable to call upon their mellifluous voices, fascinating faces, or sweeping physical gestures to give weight to hollow words."

By Tim Walker on Wednesday, September 25, 2002 - 04:42 pm:

There is a cusp near the bottom of mass media fame where it overlaps with Web fame. When I typed "Melanie Griffith" into the AOL Keyword blank I got a list of 67300 web site. I scrolled through perhaps a tenth of the list-the sites all seemed to be professional biographies, or else selling souvenirs. I've noticed that web sites of the mass media famous-if professionally prepared-tend to be both slick and sterile. I checked out the Goddess site-the otherworldly feel makes it a fluke. I got similar results when I typed such keywords as Carly Simon and Goldie Hawn. Contrast this to singer-songwriter Melanie Safka Schekeryk- "Cyclone", "Ruby Tuesday", and "Brand New Key". Her mass media fame allows her an occasional new CD. But the handful of web sites are all by fans, their interest-and their names, of course-shows through even if the design looks professional. A blurb from one of her CDs: of all the "...female singer-songwriters-which included Joni Mitchell...Carly Simon and, in some respects, Carole King-Melanie recieved the least acclaim and respect." Enough mass media fame, fans will set up a few web sites. A little more mass media fame, and you will have the same kind of fame even on the Web.

By Tim Walker on Wednesday, September 25, 2002 - 10:33 pm:

Well, OK, so Schekeryk has 255 web sites. But that's a heck of a lot fewer than Griffith, and a high proportion of Schekeryk's are by fans.